


9 Lives of Timothy Drake

by kat8cha



Series: Kat8Cha's Tumblr Drabbles [2]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 04:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: An AU where Tim Drake is Catlad, instead of Robin. ABANDONED





	1. Cat's Eye Appetite

**Author's Note:**

> This was obviously intended to have 9 parts but due to reasons (cough I fell into Marvel cough I apologize cough) I never finished it. I regularly dream of going back and rewriting it. Maybe the death of Tumblr will be the key.

He’s very good at being invisible.

It’s probably evolutionary, or trained, or… something. Tim was always invisible to his parents (or so he felt) and he certainly seems to be invisible to his house keeper. At school he was a good student, good enough to get noticed, but he tended to be ignored. He had friends but that just meant he blended in even better with the crowd. He was… normal.

He was good at it, so good at it that he could crouch down on a rooftop with a camera equipped with a telephoto lens and get pictures that award winning photographers could only dream of getting. Under his bed he has three scrapbooks filled with pictures and newspaper clippings of Batman and Robin, in a box next to that he has all of the clippings on Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.

He’s in love.

He’s invisible.

He wants… he wants to be noticed.

Taking a few self-defense classes does not make one a karate master, taking a few tumbling classes does not make you an acrobat, and taking a few classes in rock climbing does not prepare you for rappelling down the side of a building so you can hover outside the third story window of the building next to it and hack into the building’s security. Compared to the thrill of that opening the window and climbing in doesn’t take much effort at all.

He’s been watching this place for a while. Watching this place and watching _her_ and watching others.

Catwoman is… noticeable. She’s not photographed often, she’s as elusive as Batman, but everyone knows she’s beautiful, and everyone knows she’s dangerous.

She is.

But she’s _not _invisible.__

__She’s been planning this heist for a month or so, or that’s when Tim started following her._ _

__She didn’t notice him either._ _

__He doesn’t want to spoil the heist, he just wants to be noticed. All he wants is the small chatoyant stone, the cat’s eye apatite._ _

__He leaves a note._ _


	2. Cat Got Your Tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim trains.

“Again!” She instructs, her voice a whip crack, and Tim dodges the blow he doesn’t see coming. He doesn’t know how Catwoman knows the men and women she calls in to train him. Some he recognizes, some he doesn’t, some he’s only heard of in whispers. The woman he fights now is called Shiva and she refers to Tim as ‘her little weapon’. She likes him, no matter the fact that Tim dislikes fighting, dislikes having to learn this.

'Just because you don’t fight, kitten,’ Catwoman’s whip, her actual whip, cracked at the feet of security, wrapped around a gun and flung it aside. Tim hovered, useless and masked, invisible in the shadows. 'Doesn’t mean that no one will fight you.’

And then Batman had crashed through the skylight.

It had been glorious, a battle in the moonlight among the broken and crackling remnants of the window. It had been short, but heated, and Tim had held his breath as Catwoman escaped and Batman launched after her.

No one had noticed him.

“Kitten.” Tim almost lashes out with his staff but holds himself still at the sound of Catwoman’s voice. Her hand ruffles his hair, her fingers scratch his scalp. “That’s enough for today.”

Tim takes a deep breath and removes his blindfold. He’s sweaty and covered in bruises, but muscle is forming on his arms that wasn’t there before and he doesn’t need to look in a mirror to know the baby fat is beginning to thin from his face. He’s changing now, becoming more than he was.

But he is still invisible, still not to the point where someone (Robin, Batman) would notice him. He’s not good enough yet.

“Stop thinking, kitten.” Catwoman had never asked his name, has never asked what he wanted to be called, has never questioned where he lives or what he does when he’s not with her. She doesn’t care, or maybe she already knows. “Come over here and help me plan this heist.”

“Our heist.”


	3. Up A Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim knows the importance of names, though he hasn't figured his own out yet.

He still doesn’t have a name. Not a real name, not an official name. He’s worked for, with, Selina for close to two years and she’s never offered to give him one, she’s only put her foot down on the idea of him calling himself Catboy.

‘You like Batman and Robin,’ she said, her attention on the lock she was picking for practice as her cats brushed against her ankles, 'What does a bird have to do with a bat except that they both can fly?’

On the job she calls him 'kitten’, though now they have gotten to the point where they can work entirely silent. In the papers he is called her 'accomplice’ or sometimes 'assistant’ once her 'apprentice’.

Dick Grayson is Nightwing.

Jason Todd is Robin.

Tim wears a cat suit modeled after Selina’s, a little darker than her purple one, and the tail curled around his leg when he wasn’t careful. The one big adaptation between Tim’s outfit and Selina’s is that Tim wears a cup.

“What’s the matter, kitty cat, you stuck?” Robin catcalls. Tim scrambles up collapsing scaffolding until he reaches a sturdy ledge on which to perch. The rickety, rusty scaffolding has folded into a heap twenty feet below and Tim catches his breath. The ledge runs around the warehouse and from his position he can see Catwoman on the other side. They shouldn’t have pulled this heist but those diamonds had been impossible for Catwoman, and the mob… and Mr. Freeze… too resist.

And Batman, obviously, had not been able to resist all those villains gathered together.

“Too pussy to come down here and fight me like a man?” Robin, Jason, snickers at his pun.

“I think you’re too pussy to climb up here and fight me.” Tim scoots along the edge towards a possible escape route.

Jason fumes, Tim knows there is no way for the hotheaded Robin to get to him, not now.. “Copycat!”

Tim grins. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”


	4. Curiosity Killed The...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim grieves after some VERY UPSETTING THINGS happen to people he only tangentially knows.

Robin was dead.

Jason was dead.

Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, had been crippled.

Everyone knew the Joker had done both. The first one… well, the Joker bragged, even though only a few people knew that Robin was Bruce Wayne’s adopted son Jason. Tim hadn’t commented when he heard the death mentioned in certain circles, he bit his lip and stayed quiet and left. He did the same when people commented on Barbara Gordon being shot… the Commissioner had tried to keep that quiet, he had, but he couldn’t.

In Gotham, people talked.

“Kitten?” Selina’s hands in his hair, running through the sweaty mess and smoothing it down in a comforting manner. Tim’s own family had not even asked him what he was upset about but here was Selina soothing him. Selina, Selina Kyle, Catwoman. Tim had a scrapbook for her too now.

And a scrapbook for himself, for Copycat.

“I liked him.” Tim kicked his feet against the rough stonework of one of Gotham’s finest cathedrals. “I mean, he was really annoying, and I hated fighting him and he spoiled my heists but…” Below Gotham’s citizens lived their lives, car traffic whizzed by in a blur of lights, pedestrian traffic in the shadows of seething humanity, Tim stared down at it and wondered why Jason had left town, what had gone on in his life that had led him to Ethiopia.

Maybe, if he hadn’t become Copycat, if he’d paid attention instead of trying to further his criminal career…

“And she was always nice to me. I mean, when she wasn’t trying to kick my face in or your face in.” He’d met Barbara Gordon, when he’d been investigating Batgirl. She wasn’t as easy to figure out as Dick and Batman and Jason had been, she didn’t live with them, didn’t have any connection to them beyond the symbol.

Like him and Selina.

“Shhh, Kitten.” Selina pulled him close. “When you put on a costume, you take that risk.”

“We all take that risk.”


	5. Ceiling Cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teenage Superheroes (and one teenage super thief) flirt.

There was a new Robin, a girl Robin, and Tim had felt brief stabs of anger and jealousy when he saw her. He had been pushing for Batman to get a new Robin (he’d written letter after letter to Dick Grayson, he’d even gone to Titans Tower to see him, but Dick hadn’t been there) but when the blonde had shown up (Stephanie Brown, daughter of the Cluemaster, she really needed to work on identifying a tail) Tim hadn’t been sure what to think, but he’d grown to accept Stephanie as Robin. She had the quips down, if she didn’t have the flips.

She was working on that.

There was a new Batgirl too and Tim had no proof that she was Cassandra Cain beyond the circumstantial evidence of Bruce taking Cassandra in. She was fast and damn near lethal.

Tim liked her.

And sometimes, despite Batman’s disapproval, other heroes showed up.

“I told you last time.” Tim stated grumpily, dangling half over Superboy’s shoulder, he could hear Stephanie and Cass giggling behind him. “The next time you want my help, ask nicely, and no matter how nicely you ask I’m not hacking into Oracle’s network.”

Superboy set him down on the rooftop (finally) and Tim gave Robin and Batgirl his best Selina style glare, neither girl was impressed.

“But Nightwing’s over tonight.” Stephanie used her best wheedling voice; it was Tim’s turn to be unimpressed. “We all know you have a Nightwing crush.”

“I don’t.” Superboy’s grin was utterly smarmy, it was impossible to take him seriously. “I mean, I can’t fault you on it, he does have those Perfect Cheekbones and dat a-”

“I’m still not helping you hack Oracle’s network. If there is anything Catwoman taught me it was not to spy on a girl and her mouse.” With those last words Tim smiled and took several steps back to dive off the rooftop.

His dramatic escape was somewhat ruined when Superboy grabbed him with his TTK but he tried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please tell me i'm not the only one who remembers ceiling cat


	6. Cat ate the Canary Grin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim runs into Jason when Jason's moonlighting as Nightwing

His dad was dead now, dead and buried and his stepmother (who was sweet but who really had known Tim as well as the average English speaker could read Cyrillic text) was in Bludhaven being treated for shock. Tim… needed a break from Gotham. Stephanie’d been hurt during the events of the crisis and it seemed everyone needed a break from Gotham as Tim had read that Bruce Wayne and Dick, Cas and Steph had gone off on some kind of cruise. Selina was…

The last Tim had heard Selina was pregnant and taking some time for herself, just like Tim was taking some time for himself in New York.

“Hello there, pretty kitty.” Tim didn’t startle easy, he was a trained cat burglar, he’d been snuck up on by the best, he’d faced down crime lords and _Batman_.

He startled and dug his nails into the wall he was clinging to, ruining the 18th century wallpaper façade. Thankfully Tim had not gotten to unhooking the hanging he wanted to steal (medieval tapestry, there were cats on it, it was pertinent!) and thus hadn’t ruined _that_ at least. The second he lost in startlement was a second too long when Tim dropped down to the floor he was quickly pinned to the wall by a familiar costume.

“I don’t see a collar, you lost?” A knife dug in under Tim’s chin, an escrima stick pressed hard against his chest. Tim couldn’t even suck in a breath in surprise.

He knew that costume.

He even knew that face, although he was used to seeing it reflected back at him from the inside of his eyelids.

“Jason?”

The eyeholes in Jason’s Nightwing mask widened in shock though they narrowed quickly afterwards. “Selina’s little Copycat.” A man-eating smile bloomed over Jason’s face and Tim wasn’t sure he could breathe. grin got even wider at Tim’s poorly hidden panic. “You really fill out that catsuit now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually no, i remember why i didn't continue it and it's because I don't like Tim/Jason but I DEFINITELY implied it here, also, Tim never ages in comics but OTHER characters that DIE when they're TEENAGERS and COME BACK TO LIFE are allowed to age...
> 
> anyway, my fingers are crossed that I'll get back to this. I'd at least like to finish it off.


End file.
